


Primer

by soldierspy (hinterland)



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-25
Updated: 2012-08-25
Packaged: 2017-11-12 20:03:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hinterland/pseuds/soldierspy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study: pre-League of Shadows.</p><p>→ When the violence peaks, he is not among them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Primer

#### 1\. risen from darkness

He is born in a different sort of hell. He goes from one darkness to the next: his mother’s womb, from which she tears him as she labours alone, a rebel brought low by the crimes of his sire; the endless night of Peña Dura, a place harder than the creatures which populate it. 

The Batman should have known from Bane’s own words ( _the dark: I was born in it, moulded by it, did not see light until I was a man_ ), but then, it’s difficult to think when your spine is being broken by the storyteller. 

Born in darkness, cast by it, Peña Dura is a different sort of hell than the Pit, where light is the implement of torture. The cynosure, touching the eyes of all. 

He only meets the light as a free man.

  


#### 2\. no stone unturned

His is the English of one self-taught: precise, bound by the rules of grammar, and occasionally ridiculous. Dutch, too, spoken exactly, and even, with its wet fricatives, enjoyed. Portuguese and Spanish, though these are less distinct, phrases and conjugations slipping from one to the next in a fluid thrill against his palate, emerging from the bastard offspring of both that is his mother tongue with its disregard for gender.

As a child, he struggles with certain concepts. Sun. Daytime. Overcast. Moonlight. Heaven. The Jesuit does his best with the last one, but there are some things you just can’t teach. Prayer, however, isn’t one of them. _Mi la kumina Bo, Maria, yen di grasia._ Mary, full of grace.

 _What is grace?_ Again, not something you can learn down here. A pointless lesson when the child who would know hides a shiv in his osito’s back.

  


#### 3\. underground army

The Pit swallows him whole after he’s made a true name for himself. Violence carries him -- Peña Dura, then Venezuela, then the world beyond, the blood of those who hunt for diamonds still a crust beneath his boots as he plies the base of the Hindu Kush -- and though it does not own him, violence accepts him.

(Had it not, he would be dead thrice over before he could strip down to his skin and accept the prison garb, that mockery of the sky above in its folds of blue and white.)

A sort of mania grips the men here; the Pit never lets them forget what it is they seek, and so the violence here is one of acute despair. Everything is sharp, and the sun, so very burning bright, does not allow them a reprieve. In his first week, a man attempts the climb, and when the prisoner is returned to the ground, he stands above him, held in childlike wonderment at the broken body whose reward for looking up to the sky is a shattered skull and a broken neck. This must be what heaven is: the eternal, impossible struggle, and the final radiance that fills your eyes before you die. Perhaps he has finally learned this lesson.

He draws his veils and folds himself into a spill of shadow.

  


#### 4\. born in darkness

When she thinks no one is listening, the warlord’s daughter lets herself cry. This is no place for weakness, yet her tears are many, spilled when the inmates are all meant to be asleep. But he hears her. He’s never learned the sleep patterns of normal men, and he’s awake when she goes into labour.

Then comes the sound of an infant. A single cry; the only cry.

  


#### 5\. imagine the fire

He loves her. Not like a pet, for all that she is an anomaly. Not as man loves woman, nor as a father loves his daughter.

She is an ideal. Grasping such abstractions have never been his strong suit, but now he thinks he knows what the Jesuit was talking about. And he will protect her, teach her, know her -- and all this from beyond the bars that keep the heaving masses of the Pit away from the princess and her daughter.

In the depths of the night (a false depth; it is never truly dark here, for the stars themselves do not allow this one comfort), it is not uncommon to see him sat before the door to their cage, arms and chin rested upon the horizontal bars as he shows her how to read from one of the few books that can be found down here. Thick fingers point at words, keep her focused across the page, and draw the blue cowl from her face so that it does not muffle her. Mary, full of grace. 

(What is grace?)

  


#### 6\. rise

When the violence peaks, he is not among them. His blood no longer sings for such directionless savagery. It sings for her -- the girl-child cradled in his arms, the orphan, the ideal he must protect, even if it means giving her up to the light.


End file.
